


i dreamed of a day

by dirgewithoutmusic



Series: bringing the war home [13]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), infinity war - Fandom
Genre: But here it is, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, I Have Opinions, Infinity War spoilers, and this won't fix all of them, i dunno man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 23:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14579718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic/pseuds/dirgewithoutmusic
Summary: Gamora was falling.The sky broke grey and vast above her. She twisted in the air, feeling in her every pocket and pouch for some sort of weapon-- a gun, a penknife, a plastic spork-- maybe if she died before she hit ground, it wouldn’t count.Everything was gone. She scratched at her neck but her fingernails were short and blunt. Her throat was numb in the freezing air. She slammed at what should have been one of the most fragile parts of the body, but her esophagus and windpipe had been replaced with sturdier things long ago.The wind was shrieking, and she was yelling, throwing all her breath away, but all the same she could hear them perfectly.The red demon said, “You will regret it.”“No,” Thanos said. She clawed at her throat and did not stop trying to die, all through the long fall.He will, said a voice in her ear. Regret.Gamora spat out against the wind, through her bruising throat and her fucking indestructible windpipe, “That’s one cold--”“--comfort,” Gamora finished and the word echoed into the sudden silence.No, not silence.Gamora opened her eyes.





	i dreamed of a day

 

_You stand in a burning junkpile at the end of your best friend’s gun, and you hope he loves you enough to shoot._

_You offer a raised chin to your sister’s fist, because you know how little of her body remains her own-- taken apart, welded and wired, your father trying to build another as good as you._

_You fight the hand that’s wrapped around your forearm, too small under those big sausage fingers, but he yanks you forward--_

-

Gamora was falling. The mist obscured the shrinking figure on the clifftop and the wind shrieked in her ears. This was not her first long fall-- she had soared through vacuum, leapt off buildings with jetpacks and stolen parachutes, tumbled off fragments of exploding planets, and found safe ground.

She couldn’t see the ground coming, just the sky, until she felt her body tip back in the air, her ankles flailing above her, the mist clearing. The sky broke grey and vast above her, the horizon visible at the very top of her vision, growing wider and clearer, lakes and low dunes and craggy peaks. She closed her eyes. She slammed them closed, an act of violence in and of itself, and tried not to listen for the ground.

It seemed the kind of thing her father might do, to decide he must face Death when he met his end, must shake Its hand and look It in the eye.

She screamed, because why not. She twisted in the air, feeling in her every pocket and pouch for some sort of weapon-- a gun, a penknife, a plastic spork-- maybe if she died before she hit ground, it wouldn’t count.

Everything was gone. She scratched at her neck but her fingernails were short, and blunt; she’d trimmed them in the ship just two days ago, while Groot passed her bits of sandpaper to buff them with. He’d watched her curiously, peeking over his game, the same way he did whenever Peter shaved or Mantis polished her antennae.

Her throat was numb in the freezing air, and if she’d managed to even break skin she couldn’t tell. She slammed at what should have been one of the most fragile parts of the body, but her esophagus and windpipe had been replaced with sturdier things long ago.

The wind was shrieking, and she was yelling, throwing all her breath away, but all the same she could hear them perfectly, like the words were being born inside her ear canals.

The red demon who had brought them to the cliff’s edge said, “You will regret it.”

Her tears froze on her cheeks. She clawed at her throat and did not stop trying to die, all through the long fall.

“No,” Thanos said. She could feel that weight settling heavy on his shoulders and she didn’t want it-- not his grief, not his mercy, not his voice reverberating with it.

 _He will_ , said a voice. _Regret._

Gamora spat out against the wind, through her bruising throat and her fucking indestructible windpipe, “That’s one cold--”

-

“--comfort,” Gamora finished and the word echoed into the sudden silence.

No, not silence.

Gamora opened her eyes.

She remembered this world. Shattered glass crunched beneath the thick soles of her boots and she lifted her head, breathing in chemical smoke that burned all down her throat. A breeze whistled between the skeletons of what had been towering, elegant buildings-- a sweet breeze, soft and flirty, that kind that belonged to spring days thinking of turning to summer.

She knew this world. Xandar. She had saved it-- she, and the Guardians, and thousands of fighters who rose up into the sky in a bright gold net and died there, burning like stars.

But the sky was empty. The ground was burning. This was not Ronan’s work, not today.

Gamora moved down the empty street, and the main square finally came into view, with its wide, low reflecting pool and slender saplings. Voices flooded into her ears like a dam released. Her father’s men were separating the people into two sides, shouting over the sobs, yanking at slender wrists and shoving them into place. People were kneeling in what shallow water remained in the pool. The walks were stained dark with it.

Her hands twisted at her sides. Her forearm ached from Thanos’s grip, but she would not have time to form bruises before she hit ground. Had she-- had she hit ground? What was this, a post-mortem walk-through of people she had failed to save?

Cries rose up in the air as they readied their blasters. Her home planet had sounded like this. Every planet she had helped Thanos take had sounded like this.

Gamora walked forward, over fallen tree limbs and children, glass and gravel underfoot. She did not rush. Even if they’d been here in time, even if they had known, they could have done nothing here. She liked to think they would have tried, her crazy bunch of wackos and their death-wishes that never quite stuck.

The blaster shots rang out. _Power_ , said the voice and Gamora whirled around, her hair whipping about her ears.

Smoke curled through the hollowed-out buildings she’d walked through. Shots sizzled out behind her, and the screaming started up, the survivors and their living, aching lungs-- but they were muted in the face of a small green girl standing in the once-empty street.

Gamora took a stumbling step backward, splashing into the reflecting pool. Water soaked her heel, her ankle, and she just kept falling, the darkness closing in over her head and surging into her open mouth.

-

_You go for the knife, because you want to live, but, god, more than anything you want to kill no more children. You go for the knife, because he gave it to you, called it balanced, called it beautiful, because you ripped open Nebula’s quadriceps with it once and got a day of respite as a reward._

_You scream, when you fall, because maybe the sound will give him nightmares. Maybe someone will hear, and catch you. You fall, and you can feel the imprint of his thick fingers on your forearm, the bruises that will never bloom to life._

_You fall, and you scream, and you can see him growing smaller and smaller on the clifftop. You can feel the ground coming. You close your eyes._

-

Gamora thudded down on her knees. Her left knee hit metal and she spat a curse, wincing at the impact; her right hit something softer and she swallowed down a second curse as she stood gingerly, stepping away from the corpse at her feet.

She was on a ship whose design she didn’t know. Wide, with a big empty chamber-- a cargo ship, perhaps. She recognized enough of the shape and the lettering on the walls that she’d likely be able to pilot it in a pinch-- after more than a decade of commandeering alien vessels for fun, evil, or profit, she had a good gut feel for what would be workable and what would be incomprehensible under her fingers. She wiped her hands over her pants, feeling every crease of rough fabric under her palms.

The bodies-- perhaps, if this was a cargo ship, the cargo-- were bipedal aliens, a variety of pink and brown the way Peter’s people were. Their dress was strange, though, and their muscles too universally defined. She did not think these were Peter’s Earthlings, who were largely not a space-faring people.

Then she saw what Thanos was hauling. He had one massive fist around Thor’s skull-- so these were the Asgardian refugees. Another tragedy of her father’s making, washed up at her feet. She looked away.

“This was where he took the Space Stone,” said a voice beside her and Gamora jerked and stumbled away, tripping over a limp, outstretched arm. She didn’t look down at its owner’s slack face, instead keeping her eyes on the speaker-- Drax, who was watching Thanos with patient consideration.

“You’re not really here,” she said, after a moment. Across the ship’s cluttered floor, Thanos gazed at a dark-haired Asgardian. “You’re still alive, aren’t you? Tell me his spell broke when we left, tell me they put you back together.”

The dark-haired Asgardian’s movements were slow, smooth, supplicatory. Gamora’s attention flicked between him and Drax.

“It was given,” Drax said, watching Loki move towards Thanos and smile. “A trade. A life, for so much death.” Drax’s shoulders were an unfamiliar slope, slimmer and softer, his skin darker-- he was younger, she realized, this ghost or projection or whatever it was. This was Drax before she’d known him.

“The Stone?” Gamora saw the knife flicker into life in the Asgardian’s hand and tore her gaze away. She knew how this story ended. She looked at Thor instead, watched his face twist with grief. “God,” she said. “We didn’t make up how pretty he was, did we?”

“That seems like an inappropriate comment,” Drax said. “In this particular circumstance.”

She looked over at him. “This is how I can tell you’re a fake, you know. If you were here, you wouldn’t be critiquing my manners. You’d be--” She paused, twisting her hand. “Dead, probably, but maybe you’d manage to bruise him first.”

Drax looked back at her, expressionless. God, she didn’t know what to do with him looking so young, his shoulders slim. It was an illusion, a hallucination, the last squeak of a brain dying alone, but she knew he had once looked like this-- unscarred, dark grey from days in the sun, with a home to go to. “Oh,” she said. “Was that unkind, too? First off, you’re not really Drax, and if you were you wouldn’t care. You’d laugh.”

The thing that looked like Drax didn’t move its mouth, but words filled the air, overlaying the sound of a godling’s corpse hitting the floor, Thor’s muffled grief. _They are dying._

“They’re dead. And maybe you are, too.” She turned away from him. The woman at her feet had her hair drawn back in a golden net. Her eyes were closed. Half her torso was gone. “This doesn’t make it worse, seeing it. I already knew it-- Thor told us about his people. About Xandar. And I’ve seen it all before. It always looks the same.”

 _It is not the same_.

Gamora turned back but Drax was gone. Purple flames crawled greedily over the ship, beginning to tear it apart.

 _Power_ , the voice whispered. _They always reach for my brother, first._

The ship splintered, exploding outward, and Gamora felt herself go with it-- her bones shattering, her lungs popping like a balloon, the wet darkness inside her hurled in every direction at once.

-

_He has never known your sadness. He has never heard your grief, even when you spat it in his face._

_You claim happiness, and he tells you you were starving, but you remember purple butterflies in the afternoon heat, remember your mother scouring out other people’s chamberpots, singing nursery songs to drown out the task, remember the smells in the market, the heavy spices and the noise of it, the way it held you close in the dust, the heat, the draping awnings in red and green and yellow and black. You remember sticky porridge seasoned with herbs you grew in the back alley, their tender, twisting little tendrils, the way you waited all spring for them to push up from the earth._

_You claim fear, and he tells you he needs you, he tells you he loves you, he tells you you are precious and powerful and pretending. You are starving at a feast. You are pouring sand into your soup bowl. You are fiddling with the steak knives, watching the light slick along their blades._

-

The Collector’s junkyard rose up in flames around her. Gamora could feel the heat on her skin, scouring away the last of the windchill. “The reality stone,” she said. “Why are you showing me this? I was _there_.”

“Go left,” Peter hissed and she jerked at the sound, watching herself go right, Mantis following. Drax was facedown on the floor, snoring, back to his broad shoulders and his ashy sunless skin. Fire flickered around them and none of them saw it, none of them flinched from the heat.

Thanos stood with his hands clasped behind him, watching an hours-younger version of herself tiptoe right and then bury her knife into a standing pile of burning junk. A spare tile rolled out, bouncing off Mantis’s foot. A box of data pads clattered to the floor, stinking with burning chemicals. She’d thought that warmth had been him, his skin running hotter than hers always.  

Thanos had stood like that, hands clasped, over so many of her lessons, of her matches with Nebula or the other Children, of her recitations of facts, tactics, or philosophy. He watched her now-- then?-- as her knees hit the corrugated metal floor, and then he spoke.

_Is that sadness I sense in you, daughter? In my heart I knew you still cared._

Gamora jerked away, turning around and pacing back past where Peter was hiding, muttering, past where Drax was waking and launching himself at Thanos. She didn’t want to hear him speak. She wanted to kick herself in the shins and scream through her aching throat _get up get up get up._  

Drax scattered into soft cubes. Mantis shredded into long ribbons, still warm and breathing. She kept walking-- out of sight, out of mind, right? Peter pulled the trigger, and god she did love him for that, god did she hate him for not doing it sooner. Thanos stepped backwards, through space but not yet time, but the junk pile kept burning around her.

Silence fell, unnatural, over the vaulted room. The fire kept burning but stopped crackling. She kicked at the bottoms of teetering piles and watched precious objects and glittery trash bounce down the aisles and little pathways. Her throat burned, her wrist, her knees. She retraced her steps, slow and sullen.

When she got back, Peter was standing frozen, unblinking, stuck in the instant of watching her go. Drax was still scattered on the floor. She looked away.

A small girl with two swaying antennae sat in the unspooled threads of her adult self, knotting them into little bracelets and cat’s cradles. Gamora winced to see one of Mantis’s eyes flick, skewed as a younger her tugged a knot tight.

 _Gamora, daughter of Thanos_ , said the voice. Young Mantis smiled at her, antennae curling around each other. Gamora took a careful step forward, the corrugated metal creaking under her. _My gift._

Gamora curled her left hand into a fist. Peter flickered like a poor video connection, the light of the fire showing through him. “No, no one’s gift,” she said. “I was not his to give.”

Mantis shrugged, small and fluid. Gamora paced around her, itching in her skin. She didn’t want to stay still.

Gamora could imagine Mantis, a child just like this, building stick and pebble palaces alone on a planet, her whole life created just to help an old man sleep in peace. She would go running through empty fields, catch newts in narrow canyons that were cool even on the hottest days, climb slopes of skidding gravel, sleep in the soft needles under the high forest trees. He would always find her.

Mantis smiled and reached out, offering her a knotted bracelet. The rest of her hung from it in draping, twitching ribbons of tan and green. The young one said, _All the same._

Gamora stumbled back. “It is not the same,” she said, but she said it to sudden darkness.  

-

_It is pretty and perfectly balanced, and so are you-- so you will be, you will keep on walking this tightrope, this knife’s edge. Favored daughter and hated sister, last of your line and the first into the breach--_

_So much of you is still you, unlike Nebula, unlike every lesser Child of your Father. This is yours, pretty and perfectly balanced, the first thing he ever gave you. You press the point to the center of your palm, lightly, just lightly, perfectly light, and you know not all blades feel the same, sinking through your skin, but this one you keep polished, keep sharp, keep perfect--_

_A sharp knife is a mercy, and so are you you you--_

-

Light came back by inches, slowly brightening a dead planet’s surface. Gamora twisted the soles of her boots in the dry soil and dragged her eyes along the horizon. She knew this place. It had spawned her father. It had died around him, and he had decided he understood why and how.

He’d liked to take them here, her and the other Children. When Peter talked of family camping trips, she thought of this place-- huddling around the buzzing generator for warmth, while Thanos told stories of being too wise for his time, an almost savior, a prophet unheard. The planet was empty and rather than repopulate and revitalize it, Thanos opened it up for their training, let them raze its surface.

She’d almost bled out in a circle of charcoal trees on another continent. She’d severed Fhu’s third hand just a mile from here, to the sound of Thanos’s approving hum. He got Fhu a beautiful cybernetic, after, but Fhu never found a covering he liked. The friction was never quite right, he explained, whenever he accidentally let bowls of oatmeal or porridge or soup slip into Gamora’s lap at meals.

A pale alien was bleeding out. Gamora glanced once at his wound, and then away. It might be survivable, but not with her father standing four patient paces away.

“Stark, you have my respect.” Thanos told the dying man and Gamora spat at his feet. “I hope the people of Earth remember you.”

“They will remember _you_ ,” she told him, but he wasn’t listening, he wasn’t really here. “They will burn your effigy for millenia to come and they will _never_ be grateful.”

The back of her neck crawled, like there was an insect scrabbling over it, or eyes on her. She turned around slow, and saw a cloaked man staring straight at her-- no, straight through her, surely, right? She was between him and Thanos. She stepped to the side, and the cloaked man’s eyes followed her for a moment--maybe to Stark, behind her? Maybe she left something in the air when she moved? But she wasn’t here, really. This had already happened, hadn’t it?-- before they snapped back to Thanos.

“Who are you?” Gamora said. “Can you see me?”

“No,” the cloaked man rasped.

She had one brief moment of hope that maybe he had heard her, but then he went on, bargaining for the life of the man named Stark, and her stomach turned to ice and hate in her chest. “No,” she said.

The cloaked man plucked a star from the sky, and it turned into a green stone. _Time_ , said the voice, with the warmth of a hello, and the sound hit dull on Gamora’s ears.

“No,” she said. “No, no--”

She tried to reach for the streak of green as it spiralled toward Thanos’s gauntlet like fluorescent mold circling a drain, but it shot straight through her. A spark of pain blossomed where the green star had struck her and almost sent her to her knees. She gasped, legs buckling.

“Why did you do that?” Stark asked.

“Why did you do that?” Gamora screamed. “ _Why_ , you had it safe, he was ready to die, he was ready, I was ready--”

Gamora pitched forward onto her knees as the ground shifted and shook beneath her. She jammed her fists into the ground and looked up to see everyone just the same, unshaken-- the older human was bleeding out. Her father was smiling, a knuckle growing a brighter and bolder green, blinding. The cloaked man was watching, unashamed, exhausted, patient, and she hissed at him through bared teeth even as the ground exploded beneath her.

It threw her up into the air, but she thudded down a moment later, knocked aside by the great creaking trunks that were shooting up around her. She curled up, covering her face while needled branches whipped at her as they shot upward toward a blueing sky. She peeked up through her fingers and clean, cold air flooded into her mouth.

After a long moment, everything was still. An old-growth forest stretched around her as far as she could see, trunks fading into green shadows. Her cheek was bleeding; she wiped it off on one sleeve, gaze tracing up the high, curving trunks to where they tapered to swaying points. The wind didn’t reach her, down among their roots. “Hello?” she said.

Gamora pushed herself to her feet, trying not to wobble on them. She took an uncertain step forward, boots crunching over twigs, which snapped like shots in the dark. “Is anyone there?”

The trees did not answer. Silence was a heavy weight over her one small clearing but it felt, strongly and terribly, like it had swallowed the whole planet. “Why are you showing me all this?” she shouted, but her voice didn’t even echo back to her, vanishing into the trees.

What had it been like, for Mantis, a whole world all her own? Alone, except when he came to find her? Gamora squinted into the fading distances, trying to find if there was anything to see other than green.

After Thanos vanished, on Knowhere-- had they put Mantis and Drax back together? He hadn’t killed them-- she’d seen Mantis’s eyes flick and fear-- but had he left them like that? She wanted to tell herself he didn’t play games like that, but she had watched him take Nebula apart, piece by piece. She could tell herself he didn’t call them games, but that was all. She took a breath.

The detail hadn’t been there, in the junkyard. The illusion had felt like him-- sweeping, overwhelming, falling apart if you looked at it too closely. She had already been drowning in him, maybe, in the memories and in her need to stop him, maybe that’s why she hadn’t seen it then.

She had stepped forward, heavy in Knowhere’s gravity. Her father’s voice had echoed through the aisles and crooked lanes of the precious burning garbage. She hadn’t seen the fire, that first time, when she had been living it. She hadn’t seen the sharp edges on every object, the dull colors, the disgust with which it was rendered-- Thanos’s signature, all.

The long aisles of trees kept going, twisting and shivering around. The ground did not rise or fall. There were no stones, no creeks or bushes, no birds. The trunks leaned in close, rustling overhead.

She hadn’t smelled the illusion or the lie. The first time, she hadn’t seen that the moment they heard Thanos, Peter hadn’t looked for their enemy, his captured prey, or the Stone they were there to seek and save. But, played again, she saw the fire-- she saw her father’s shoddy, arrogant workmanship-- she saw that when they heard Thanos’s voice the first thing Peter did was look to her.

Gamora strode forward in a rapid burst of movement, stepping up onto the roots of one of the countless trees.

“Is this supposed to be Groot?” Gamora pressed one palm against a rough bit of bark. It was warm under her hand, pulsing just slightly. She pulled her hand away, unsettled, and leapt lightly off the root. “No sarcasm, no sick dance moves? This is a poor approximation of him.”

 _What is a soul? when you can just branch another?_ The voice sounded embarrassed, defensive. _Do you wonder, ever? if that twig was? the same friend? you lost?_

Gamora moved back to the path, shaking her head. The twigs and leaves, fallen, crunched under her feet like gravel and glass.

 _I will give you. A forest_ , it said. _This is how this world looked. Once. Before Thanos. Before everything he was born into. Everything he killed._

“I don’t care for your illusions any more than I cared for his.” As she walked, the voice kept abreast with her, coming from everywhere at once.

_He took me._

“You let him.”

 _He took me._ The branches lashed high overhead and Gamora didn’t spare them an upward glance.

“You offered him the trade. Am I supposed to be sympathetic?”

_HE TOOK ME._

Gamora rolled her eyes, like at Drax in a fit of petulance or Rocket when he thought he was too clever. “He took you, yes,” she repeated, impatient.

_He took you. You. As well._

“Yes,” she said, the word dropping off her tongue reluctantly. “I was a child.”

 _A child. We have never been children._ The branches above her, which had calmed down, rustled uncertainly. _He said. He saved you._

“And I said he was full of shit,” she snapped.

 _You said_ , said the voice, and suddenly, like a radio swapped on, Gamora heard it: Thanos’s throne room, the big empty hollow of it, her thrown bowl shattering against his massive chair _no, no, we were happy on my home planet._

“Stop it,” she said.

The wind picked over the cliff, the demon’s cloak, tugged at her hair, _no this isn’t love._

“It wasn’t,” she said. “Stop it.”

_YOU DO NOT KNOW THAT._

“I am,” said Gamora, her father’s words angry and burning in her throat, “ _the only one who knows that._ ” The arched, green halls echoed empty and dark around her. There was no sound of creatures in the bush, of branches creaking or twigs snapping high above. “It wasn’t love,” she said. “I wasn’t his to give.”

_And yet. He gave you. Who can own a soul?_

“ _Me_ ,” Gamora snapped. “ _I_ do-- you can’t have me, and neither can he. Put me back.”

_Into that bleeding thing? You don’t want that._

Gamora’s heart thudded in her chest. “So I’m dead then. Why are you doing this? Why am I _here_?”

_You are my gift._

Gamora took another step forward, but the leaves at her feet opened up and the darkness swallowed her whole.

-

_You hope they remember you. You don’t want to hope that, you don’t think you should, but you do. You hope they remember Peter’s music, you hope some kid on some planet overheard the beats, the high trumpeting words, and years later they sing it to drown out tasks they hate. You hope it gives them joy._

_You hope they remember Drax’s laugh at inappropriate moments, you hope they remember the way you all snapped to attention at the same moment, you hope they remember you looked like chaos, but, god, you saved the world, you saved worlds again and again and then you left._

_You hope that little girl remembers Groot’s flower, hope she sketches it in the corners of her schoolwork, hope she remembers that once upon a time someone knew she deserved that speck of beauty. You hope they remember Rocket is a he and not an it, hope assholes remember the chunks he tore or shot out of their sides, hope someone somewhere remembers the way he lifted baby Groot in those soft, careful hands._

_You don’t think you should, because what have you earned, really? How many peoples have you burned, how many skies have you darkened? How many have you saved?_

_You stopped counting-- it was something you learned from Nebula, back when you never looked at her except for sidelong, back when you didn’t call her sister because you wanted to be able to sleep at night. You stopped counting, but you still have a feel for the numbers and you don’t think they add up to anything good. Child of Thanos, child of half a world gone, child of your mother singing to drown out ugly but necessary work-- you hope someone somewhere remembers you for a kindness._

_You are dying, or dead. You are falling, or fallen. You do not think you should, but you hope they remember you._

-

A young alien woman-- pale and pink like Peter-- stood in the dappled shade of a half-toppled forest. Gamora saw her before she saw anything else-- before the trees filtered in, or the light, or the leaf-littered ground, or the red man kneeling before her with the Mind Stone shining from his forehead. Gamora jerked back.

“Where is he?” Gamora asked. “If the Stone is here--” She turned quickly, but the long aisles of trees and low brush were empty.

 _Coming_.

“It is time,” said the red man, and Gamora turned to stare as the woman lifted her hand, blooming red light like blood in water.

_You know what I see, when I meet one of you?_

Every bird that remained in the grove screamed. It was the last Stone, the thing buried in this man’s skull, and her father was coming.

 _Everywhere you have been_ , the voice said. _Everything you have been and everything you have built. These two-- can you feel their late nights? Their careful, stolen moments? They were building something._

“They know he’s coming,” Gamora said. “They’re destroying it.”

 _A sufficiently powerful energy source_ , said the voice, and Gamora knew it was quoting again, was stealing, was gargling other people’s words in its nonexistent throat. _With a signature similar to its own. How better to destroy a thing than with its own power?_

On Knowhere, Gamora had been ready. She had known the price. She had known it would break Peter, maybe forever, to pull that trigger-- but there were more important things.

Red light from the woman’s palms began to fill up the whole clearing, refracting off the Stone. Gamora turned around, her eyes watering, and saw Peter-- not Starlord, not her titan-killing, long-term booty call, but a boy, all elbows and knobbly knees, bobbing along to the tune that beat in his headphones.

She took a step forward. “Quill?”

Peter reached up on his tiptoes, suddenly only a foot from her, offering the headphones from around his neck. “You probably hadn’t washed your hair in weeks at this point in your life,” Gamora told him sternly, but she took them. The cord hung between them, swaying in the growing light.

The headphones spat static, and then the voice said, _This is your hero? This is who you leave the last goodbye for?_

“This is my friend,” said Gamora. “And what do you mean last? Where’s Rocket?”

Peter shook his head. _This child, you would listen to him? You would follow him?_

“I never listen,” said Gamora.  

The voice was full of confused scorn. _You call yourself heroes-- the rootless tree, the experiment, the widower, the mantis, the boy. This boy-- he doesn’t care about the_ universe _._

Peter stared up at her, young in too-big ravager gear. He’d almost killed them all once to go back into a prison and get his Walkman, but he hadn’t loved them then. “Not always,” said Gamora. “But _I_ care.”

 _Poachers_ , said the voice. The red light scraped over everything, lit up Peter’s face, his acne and the whites of his eyes. _Bounty hunters. Mistakes and fools. Mercenaries. Callous, chaotic, and cowardly. Am I wrong?_

Gamora hissed through her teeth. “Not-- entirely. But they are my family.”

 _Family_ , said the voice.

“Yes, _family_ . I chose them. They do not have to be good, they just have to be mine. _I_ will be good.” Gamora shook her head, red streaking her vision. “I _was_ good. Maybe they don’t know, maybe they won’t remember me-- but I _was_.”

 _Just like your father,_ said the voice, and she felt like it was circling her, even though she couldn’t see it in the red-streaked dust motes of this forest. Leaves fell, soft and unconcerned, around them. She thought people might be screaming, but all she could hear was the voice talking through Peter’s headphones. _You feel responsible for the whole galaxy-- is that not the same arrogance?_

She ripped the headphones from her ears, sending the small, silent Peter reeling forward to catch them. “Arrogance? Alright, I am arrogant,” she said, whirling around to glare in every direction. “We were the Guardians of the Galaxy, us rag-tag bunch of misfits, and yeah wasn’t the hubris obvious in the _name_ ? But we saved whole worlds. We did our best, for the universe. I did my _best_ to die for it.”

_Yes._

The light was growing brighter and brighter. The woman was beginning to shake, and Gamora looked away.

 _Listen_ , said the voice, and suddenly Gamora could feel the robot-- Vision, his name was _Vision_ , but sometimes it was Jarvis and he dreamed of being someone named Tony, he dreamed of wormholes over skyscrapers, of something green hiding in his chest, of a golden light at the beginning of all things, the first thought, the first hope, the first spark in the first mind-- she could feel him coming apart. She could feel the suns that burned in Wanda’s palms, the words that were dying on her lips: _this isn’t fair i love you does it hurt i’m sorry please don’t make me do this_

Gamora stumbled a step forward, under the weight of both those souls. She knew the dark cells and needles and boxes that had put this light in Wanda’s veins. She knew the taste of paprikash cooked right, in a little kitchenette in Poland. She could feel the impact of a city falling from the sky, the dust that rose up. She knew the moment Wanda forgave him just a little, returned an email, asked after Rhodey and got back a video of a human man cursing out three overly-helpful robotic arms Gamora almost knew the names of--

_i don’t want to do this how can this be the end please end please just go i cannot keep killing you oh g-d oh please let it stop i cannot_

Gamora stumbled another step forward, reaching out to catch Wanda’s elbow with one weightless hand. “You have to do it,” she rasped through a throat that still ached from her own clawing. “Please. I know you love him. He _knows_. It is worth it, it is.”

Wanda was years younger than her. Gamora could hear the ruckus of Sokovia’s biggest town square, smell the spices, could hear her grandmother singing, couldn’t translate the words exactly, not this many years out-- she could hear the market, the chaos and the joy of it, the haggling and the hawking, could taste the little green shoots in her porridge, could hear her mother singing over chamberpots.

She could hear Peter’s music shaking through their ship, through the ship that had been his but was theirs now, Groot’s and Rocket’s, Drax’s, Mantis’s-- had Mantis ever felt cramped in that ship, after she’d had a whole planet all alone? But she had a galaxy now, didn’t she? And a door she could lock.

Sound couldn’t travel in space, but Gamora liked to imagine they left trails of music whispering behind them, filling up the void, the way Pietro’s reliable, comfortable thoughts filled Wanda’s mind when the world was too wide, too deep, too full-- the way they had filled, _had_ filled, now there was nothing, a city falling, a wall of dust rising up--

_Nebula, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you alone._

Vision’s stone shattered into thick, dead shards of amber and Wanda thudded to her knees. Gamora thudded down with her, layering bruises on bruises, and she squeezed her arm in a desperate thanks Wanda couldn’t feel, still tangled in a soul not her own-- but just one, just one.

“He can’t have this one,” Gamora whispered. “Thank you, I’m sorry, I understand. Now come on, get out of here, before he comes, please I want you to _live--_ ”

Thanos stepped through, into the clearing, and Gamora didn’t jerk away from the sudden flash of blue light. She clung to Wanda’s arm until it was ripped away from her, the young woman going rolling through the brush and leaf litter. Gamora rose up to her feet, fists balled. “You cannot have him,” she said and Thanos walked right through her. “There is nothing here for you,” she spat at this back. “You failed, _you have failed_.”

He lifted his gauntlet. As she turned away from him, she caught the flash of green in the corner of her eye.

“No.”

Time turned back on itself, slipping around her, through her.

Life flickered back into Vision’s eyes. “No,” she said. “No, no, no--”

The light was eating everything and though she screamed into it, she couldn’t hear herself. Thanos was smiling, thoughtful. Gamora threw herself at him but she just slammed through him and into the dirt on his far side.

 _They are dead_ , the voice echoed her. Pebbles bit into the heels of her palms. Roots scraped at her forearms. _Already, already gone. He rips the Stone from Vision’s head. He completes the gauntlet. He wins. You are the one who said it didn’t matter._

“I didn’t say it didn’t matter,” Gamora rasped, pushing herself to her feet. “I said I’d seen it before. I said I couldn’t change it.”

_Then why try._

Light dappled down through the forest’s leaves. She was a ghost, the breeze drifting through her chest unfelt, her throat aching, her fists clenched. Thor put his axe through Thanos’s chest and Gamora didn’t flinch. She didn’t hope. She watched him snap his fingers and the world went white.

-

_He kills them, and because it is with a snap of the fingers he thinks it a mercy. No long slow death, hungry and aching, sick and tired. No long slow life-- no purple butterflies, no choices, no sprouts coming back in the spring._

_You feel every life that vanishes. It takes eternity and it takes no time at all. You take every breath that vanished with them, the berry sitting on their tongue, the ache of the broken arm at the bottom of the hill, the itchy grass along the cheek, the soft touch of skin on skin, the hunger, the ache, the cough, the sweet tea, the warm bed, the relief of day’s end, the weight of the shift just beginning, the dreams, the sweet fire of an inhale after being submerged for so long, the sunlight glistening down through the dark water--_

_You carry them. You weep. You stand guard._

-

She woke in the water, lying flat on her back under an orange sky. The cold had seeped through her clothes, enrobing her in heavy, sodden cloth. Slowly, Gamora sat up.

A small, green girl sat opposite her, patient down to the pink tips of her hair. Gamora regarded her for a long moment, stretching out her shoulders, wringing out her shirt. “Why am I here?” she said.

 _I like this shape_ , it said and Gamora knew, somehow, that that was not the answer. _You have a big soul, Gamora, daughter of Thanos. You give so much of it away._

Gamora shook her head.

 _I was not his to take_ , said the little girl who wore her face. 

“He won,” Gamora spat out, but the vicious grief of her voice sounded too small here, in this vast empty plain. She felt small. “He took me, and he killed half my planet, and now he’s killed half of everything . Does it matter if we were his to take or not?”

 _I was not his to take_ , said the little girl who wore her face, and Gamora could hear her mother singing, hear the noise of the market rising up, the running children and the hawkers under the leaning awnings and the caged birds. _None of us were his to take, but he took us._

The little girl stood, and the water did not drip from her. She stepped forward, and the ripples spread out and out. _You were not his to give, but you are a gift._

“I’m not,” she said.

 _A sufficiently powerful energy source, with a signature like his own_ , the girl said. _How better for him to die?_

Gamora’s head snapped up. “I am not like him,” Gamora said, but confusion was welling up in her stomach, or maybe it was hope.

 _Everything you hate about yourself you learned from him_ , she said. _But do not hate. You are my gift._ She held out her hand. _Let me._

Gamora’s hand was dripping, chilled through, as she lifted it from the water. “What are you going to do?”

 _I promise_ , said the girl without opening her mouth, without speaking at all. _He will get everything he deserves._

Sitting, Gamora was almost at eye-level with her younger self. The Soul Stone looked out her own eyes, back at her. “We were happy,” she said.

_I know._

Gamora nodded. She pushed her hair back out of her eyes, and then she reached up and took her hand-- it was tiny in hers, warm and alive. There was a heartbeat of silence and then the water swallowed her whole.

-

_You were not his to give, but you are a gift._

-

Her boots did not scrape on the metal floor, not matter how rough she scraped them against the surface. The bar around her was almost deserted, a late night shift on a space station that never slept. Gamora had gotten into a brawl here, she was pretty sure-- or maybe it had been Drax. Or Rocket. Or maybe Peter. Anyway, she thought she remembered getting kicked out that particular hatch.

She stepped forward, heavy in her boots, and the thud didn’t come. She was cold all the way through-- not the recycled chill of the shoddier stations and the slow leech of space, but the biting cold of deep water. She didn’t shiver.

When she knocked a table with her hip, she fell into it and through the bent-shouldered alien drinking at its single stool. “Alright,” she said. “Alright. Why can’t I feel anything here? What are showing me this time?”

 _Nothing_ , Soul said. _I am giving you back._

At the bar, a tin mug slammed down, empty. “Bartender,” drawled a voice Gamora knew.

She moved across the bar so fast she felt like a surge of light, and maybe she was. Gamora stuttered to a stop just over Nebula’s left shoulder. Nebula dragged the point of a knife down the bar’s surface and flicked her brows when the bartender looked like he might protest. She gestured the blade toward the empty mug. “It has been,” Nebula rasped, “a long day. If you would--?”

She pushed the mug forward without dropping the knife, but Gamora reached out and curled her hand around Nebula’s wrist to stop her. “How about you sober up?” she said, and prayed she could be heard. “We have work to do, sister.”

Nebula’s wrist bones were jagged mounds, her muscles and tendons as much metal and wire as they were flesh-- but she was warm under Gamora’s hand, warm. The whole universe was cold, half gone, but here they were-- a girl mostly machine and a girl mostly gone.

Nebula turned her head and looked at her.

 


End file.
